Do you know which day is today?
by ellephedre
Summary: 'It's the day in which I don't know what to do anymore.' - Mamoru, missing moment of episode 61, second season. After he has broken up with Usagi, Mamorus goes back home with Chibiusa, devastated.


**Do you know which day is today?**

Author: ellephedre  
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon's characters belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Toei Animation.

* * *

_Do you know which day is today?_  
«Can we do my homework?» cries Chibiusa. Her childish voice pierces his ears. She grabs his hand and drags him along. Mamoru follows her in the living room.  
_Today is the day in which I don't know anymore what to do._  
«At school I'm learning the pluses!»  
She makes him sit on the carpet. In that moment a kid is stronger than him.  
«The sums» he corrects her.  
Chibiusa nods. «The teacher calls them that way.» She purses her toy lips, too small to be true, so similar to Usagi's.  
_Am I here with you because of this? Because you have her face?_ No. It's because he had met her in the street and Chibiusa had tackled him, grabbing his leg.  
She had found him in the best moment, and for that Mamoru had wanted to hug her. Usagi - he had thought - hadn't managed to go back home, not yet. So he had called her mother, to let her know he had the child with him.  
Now he wants to raise his hand and caress her head, just to feel better.  
«I already know how to make nine plus nine, but the teacher says I have to practice more. It's boring!»  
Chibiusa takes a notebook from her backpack. The cover is pink, nearly red, the same color of the book he had had in one hand while he had said to Usagi that it was over between the two of them. The volume had slipped from his hand, falling to ground, his arm trembling. Usagi had bent to pick it up but he had snatched it away from her. He had fled, unable to sustain her eyes for another moment.  
_Do you know that I have no idea what I'm doing?_ He murmurs without voice, to speak without being heard, just to have someone... listen to him. Even if it's not real.  
_She will die if we stay together. I will break up with her again later, if she returns. And I will do it tomorrow. And again next week, if necessary. But what about me?_  
Chibiusa opens her notebook, searching for the right page.  
She is able to read. She is a good kid.  
_What will I do now? Do you know that, once again, I have no one?  
_«Here it is!» Chibiusa opens her palm - such little hands - and pats the blank grid paper. «These are are my exercises!» She points to a printed-paper attached to the opposite page. «Can you help me?»  
«Yes.»  
_I made Usagi suffer, but she won't accept my decision. I will have to make her cry again, I will have to convince her that we were a lie. That everything I said to her - every word - was a lie._  
«What do I have to do here?» asks Chibiusa.  
She has written a sum on her sheet. Her fingertip is just bigger than one of the squares, five millimeters per five. He takes the notebook, to read the numbers.  
«Three plus one makes four.»  
«No! You mustn't tell me! I cannot cheat!»  
«Sorry.»  
_Where do you come from?_ He can't stop himself, he touches one of her ponytails. She narrows her shoulders and laughs.  
_You are just a kid._ Who plays at scaring others and gest involved in battles reserved to adults. Whoever sent her to them is a coward.  
«Where are your mom and dad?»  
She bows her head, to avoid looking at him. «My daddy is the brother of Usagi's papa.»  
She had memorized the cousin story and is sticking to it. She is a poor girl, with no one to protect her.  
«You know... I was like you.»  
She keeps writing her numbers. She is young, but already able to ignore him. Or pretend to.  
He goes on. «I lost my parents when I was you age.» He had been six. From that day ages have passed, or maybe just minutes. And once again he has no one, just like then. «I was sent to a place where someone took care of me. A kid is never left alone, okay? You have...» He falters. «You have Usagi. Her parents.»  
«I don't like Usagi.»  
«You have me, if you want. When you are scared, come to me.»  
Chibiusa has stopped writing. She moves her arm and touches his hand. «I will go back to mom and dad.» But she is afraid, and grabs his finger.  
«You will» he says to her. _You will go back to them... if your parents are alive. _He won't be the one to tell her that. Going back to mom an dad is every kid's dream. It hadn't been his.  
Chibiusa is pouting and trying hard not to make him see her face. «You are nice. Why are you with Usagi?»  
He wasn't anymore. But he had been showered with love from her, and he had believed that it would last, that it was true.  
It had been.  
_I love Usagi. But I won't be able to be with her ever again._  
He doesn't know how to explain it. He isn't able to speak of it in the past tense.  
Two brown eyes look at him, observant.  
_You are a miniature of her. And yet you are different, so small that you seem like a doll and I hope - I really hope - that nobody will ever make you feel as bad as I feel now._  
_You don't deserve it._  
«Are you sad?» Chibiusa asks him.  
«A bit.»  
«Let's color something.» Her solution is to turn a page on her notebook. «When I'm sad, it works. Daddy told me that I can draw whatever I want, even smiles.»  
She draws two lines and stresses them with a pink felt-tip pen. It's a mouth.  
«This is a smile.» She imitates the expression with her face, showing her teeths.  
She is funny.  
«See? We can laugh.»  
He doesn't want to contradict her. «Yes.»  
What did he do to deserve his life? Maybe nothing, but sometimes it seemed right to suffer. He is used to it. He keeps losing everything, in every existence he ever had. Endymion, Mamoru, always the same story. Maybe it's right to stop dragging people in his crossed destiny.  
«Here.» Chibiusa nearly makes him grab a colored pen. «You draw now. A smile.»  
He see himself moving the tip on the paper, sketching curves, lines. Bangs, a little curly. Underneath them, he draws a face.  
«It's me!» smiles Chibiusa.  
He is using the pink pen, so she believes that.  
_It's you_, he says to himself. He draws a smile on the face. _You are right, this is not Usagi. Now I'll try to laugh along with you. And I will help you, I promise. So you won't feel lost._  
He grabs another color from her pencilcase. Blue. «Draw something else.» He hands it to her. «Something beautiful.»  
She immediately comply.  
Her innocence makes him laugh: he wanted a sky and he obtains it, a sky made of blue rushed lines, inaccurate and sincere.  
Chibiusa lets go ot the blue and picks up the yellow.  
It's a beatiful sunny day, the sky is blue... He immerses himself in his own story, in the image that is coming alive in the drawing. _Usagi is not suffering anymore because of me, and she is so alive and healthy. Chibiusa has found her parents and I have managed to get through. Somehow._  
Under Chibiusa's hand, a sun is being born.  
It's yellow, blond.  
_You have the most beautiful hair, the most... _Comparisons are not fair. _I loved to touch it._  
_I'd love to do it again._  
He feels the strands under his hands, as if they were on his fingertips.  
_I love you._  
_I'm sorry for what I did to you, I'm sorry._  
He should have just stayed alone, forever.  
Chibiusa grabs a news color. Green.  
Hope.  
_I saved you, when I could. I will save you again, it's my duty._  
_And after that... I don't know._  
'Be strong', someone had said to him. Many someones, many times in his life. He doesn't remember who, or when.  
He had made it his motto. It's time to do it again.  
It's the best advice he had ever received.  
Strenght is pride, and it equals to safety. It's continuity.  
He won't give up, he doesn't want to.  
_Mamoru doesn't capitulate._  
He stops talking of himself in third person. He had stopped when he was eight, he remembers it well.  
But still, the concept stands.  
'Be strong.'  
Yes.  
He stops thinking and observes Chibiusa's last drawing.  
There is a house with a weird shape, with many sharp tips on the roof and minuscule trees all around.  
Fantasy can go a long way...  
Chibiusa gifts him with the drawing and immediately starts another one, her homework forgotten.  
He is in peace when the doorbell rings. His head is full of five-leafed flowers, seas of two lines and immense fields, only the horizon putting and end to them.  
When he opens the door, he had nearly forgotten.  
But Usagi is outside. She is devastated, full of questions for him.  
'Be strong.'  
He swallows and moves aside.  
He lets her enter, just to say goodbye again.  
'Be strong.'  
_I will._

Author's note: if you notice errors, please tell me. This story was originally written in Italian, like all my fanfictions, and published on EFP archive on 2011-12-20


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